For first-time horse owners, getting a new horse can border on the overwhelming. You have to find a suitable boarding barn or create adequate stabling on your own property and buy tack, grooming equipment, cooling sheets and/or blankets. You have to provide for proper nutrition and feeding schedules. Then you’ve got to arrange for regular veterinary exams, farrier work, and deworming protocols either independently or through the boarding barn. Novices might well wonder why it’s necessary for a healthy, adult horse to see a farrier every six to eight weeks, or if those vaccinations really are necessary, or what the reasoning is behind maintaining a regular deworming program, or why the veterinarian wants to do a physical and dental exam every year.

The reason horses benefit from this type of scheduled, routine health care is to help keep a healthy horse healthy and to catch minor problems before they become major problems. Think of it in terms of preventive maintenance: Replacing worn shingles on a roof is cheaper and easier than repairing ceiling damage caused from a leaky roof. Keeping your car’s oil changed is preferable to having your engine overhauled. It’s not any different in terms of preventive medicine for the horse.

Explains Christine Dainis, DVM, of Hagyard-Davidson-McGee, Lexington, Ky., and a board member of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, “If you can prevent problems with infectious diseases by vaccinating, foot problems by regular trimming, parasitic diseases by regular deworming, and oral problems by regular dental exams, then you really save a lot in the long run in terms of money and your horse’s health.”

Terry Swanson, DVM, a former AAEP president and a partner in Littleton Large Animal Clinic, Littleton, Colo., agrees. “Preventive medicine programs are designed to prevent disease or to care for horses in the early stages of disease. If we don’t do those things, we increase the risk.”

Like home and auto maintenance, “equine maintenance” is much cheaper for the owner and easier on the horse when preventing a disease rather than treating it, or when dealing with a disorder in its early stages rather than later. In many cases, successful outcome relies on early treatment, as when dealing with tumors, dental problems, subtle lameness, and joint disease.

A Simple Plan

In actuality, developing and maintaining a routine health schedule is not difficult. Basically, the horse should have regular vaccinations, deworming, farrier care, physical exams, and dental exams. In healthy horses, these procedures are neither long nor involved.

Vaccinations–Immunizations are the first line of defense against many infectious diseases. “Most vaccines are not 100% effective,” says Swanson, “but the ones we use routinely do make a lot of difference in a horse’s health.” For some diseases, vaccines significantly reduce the likelihood of getting a serious, even fatal disease; other diseases are more difficult to prevent, but vaccines can reduce the severity of the disease.

Vaccination protocols will vary somewhat depending on geographic area and use. Says Swanson, “For the average horse in our practice, we vaccinate against Eastern and Western encephalitis, tetanus, influenza, and rhinopneumonitis in the spring. Influenza and rhinopneumonitis vaccines are not effective for a whole year, so in the fall we booster those.”

Dainis maintains a slightly different protocol in her Kentucky practice. “In my area, I recommend that adult horses receive a yearly booster for tetanus, Eastern and Western encephalitis, rabies, and twice-yearly boosters for influenza and rhinopneumonitis. She suggests that vaccinations be done the same time every year in order to ensure consistent protection and to help the owner remember when vaccinations are due.

Deworming–Internal parasites can cause a myriad of problems in the horse. Roundworms (ascarids) can cause colic and damage the heart, liver, lungs, and gut in foals and sometimes older horses; large strongyles (bloodworms) can destroy arterial walls and blood vessels, impair circulation, and lead to colic, anemia, diarrhea, fever, unthriftiness, brain damage, and other disorders; small strongyles can lead to inflammation of the intestines, resulting in anorexia, weight loss, and chronic low-grade colic; bots induce dental disease, stomach irritations, ulcerations, and perforations of the stomach wall; pinworms can irritate the horse’s tail region, causing tail rubbing; tapeworms can result in severe ulcerations of the large intestine. Preventive deworming treatments help assure your horse won’t suffer from these disorders.

There are four basic kinds of deworming protocols to address these problems; consult with your veterinarian to decide which protocol is most appropriate in terms of protection, cost, and convenience for your individual situation.

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  Continuous deworming, whereby the horse receives pyrantel (Strongid C) each day in its feed plus twice-yearly treatments of a paste dewormer to kill parasites that pyrantel does not address.

  
  
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  Interval deworming. Deworming treatments are given on a regular basis–every six, eight, or 12 weeks, per product and/or veterinary recommendations–throughout the year.

  
  
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  Seasonal deworming. Deworming is done only during the times of the year when parasites are most susceptible in that particular geographic area.

  
  
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  Targeted deworming. Deworming is done primarily on an as-need or selective basis. A fecal egg analysis is performed every two or three months during periods of maximal parasite transmission in order to determine parasite load in each horse. Horses which are shedding eggs are dewormed and receive follow-up monitoring of the feces to help measure the effectiveness of the dewormer. Horses which aren’t shedding eggs are dewormed periodically in order to deal with damaging stages of parasites that might not yet be producing eggs

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